Joseph Stella, Master of Order, Made Collages That Revel in Mess

THE DAILY PIC (#1759): I think most art lovers who know anything at all about the American modernist Joseph Stella know him for his crystalline, hard-edged, almost Art Deco images of the modern world. That’s why I was so surprised to discover a wall of soft-edged, trash-y, outsider-ish collages by Stella in a group show at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York. The two I’m Pic-ing today are numbers 24, (at left, from about 1926) and 11 (1942) in a series titled “Macchina Naturale.” Amazing how in 1942 Stella already has the courage to make a work that is all about asking us to compare and contrast two similarly filthy pieces of paper, from different sources.